90-year-old Ethel Kennedy goes on anti-Trump hunger strike

Robert Kennedy's widow Ethel Kennedy will join her daughter Kerry and grandson Congressman Joe Kennedy III in fasting as part of the Break Bread Not Families campaign.

The 90-year-old widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, is standing with the immigrant families facing President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy at the Mexican border by fasting for 24 hours in protest. Ethel Kennedy joins with 50 other members of the Kennedy family, including her daughter Kerry Kennedy, President of RFK Human Rights; and her grandson Congressman Joe Kennedy III as she pledges to donate the money she would have spent on food to charity organizations working on the grounds to protect families.

RFK Human Rights, which Ethel Kennedy founded in memory of her husband, has joined with La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and Neta to establish Break Bread Not Families, a 24-hour fast and prayer chain that will run for 24 days in support of the 2,400 children separated from their parents because of Trump’s hardline policies.

“We want to find a way for people who can’t go down to the border to actually do something themselves at home that is concrete and creates change, and this is what we’re calling on them to do,” Ethel’s daughter Kerry Kennedy told the Boston Globe.

Starting last Saturday, June 23, the fast will run through 24 days with different elected officials, influencers, and members of the Kennedy family taking up the mantle each day. RFK Human Rights has also called on members of the public to join them and donate the price of their food for the day to Break Bread Not Families.

While Trump signed an Executive Order ordering that children not be separated from their families after feeling the heat from both sides of the aisle, Ethel Kennedy believed that it wasn’t enough to protect families attempting to cross the border.

Stating that it was “not a time to declare victory and go home,” after the order was signed, she continued in a statement to say: “Generations of Americans did not toil and sacrifice to build a country where children and their parents are placed in cages to advance a cynical political agenda.”

“For children being starved of contact with their parents, the irreparable harm inflicted by our government multiplies every single day kids remain separated from their moms and dads,” added her grandson Joe Kennedy.